


On Your Left (Forever)

by crewdlydrawn



Series: The Left and the Right [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergent, Companion Piece, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Pre-Civil War (Marvel), Sappy, Steve's Pov, as usual let's pretend Age of Ultron never happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 07:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10458978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crewdlydrawn/pseuds/crewdlydrawn
Summary: It didn't take Steve Rogers long to plan a proposal after realizing he couldn't live without Sam beside him.  The two had become partners in every aspect of their lives--including personal projects.





	

Even knowing it was there, every time the light glinted off of the ring on Sam’s finger, Steve felt as if the rays shone straight into his heart.  Sure, it looked good, the gold complimenting the rich brown of Sam’s skin, but it was what the ring represented—an answer, a yes, a promise, and a return of the feelings that felt as if they would burst through Steve’s chest at any given moment—that gave him life.

No one could doubt there had been an immediate connection between the two of them.  Natasha had seen it after their first meeting, teasing Steve in the car on the way to the Triskelion about collecting boyfriends and girlfriends wherever he went.  He had denied it on the face of logic, not having actually had more than a handful of dates since arriving in the twenty-first century, yet Sam’s face and voice had stuck with his mind the rest of the day.  It had only taken two meetings for Steve to feel he could trust Sam with his life. 

Their relationship had not turned romantic right away, or at least that’s what Steve had told himself for two years of knowing Sam.  They had kept busy with SHIELD business, with their own trails and trackings looking for Bucky—a search still incomplete—yet somehow had always found time for quiet moments.  Books had been suggested and shared, trivia traded, ways to stay sane when trails went cold.  World-wide travels had led them to shared experiences most couples would have needed to plan ahead for, and to dream about.

By the time he’d built up the nerve to ask Sam out on a proper date, a defined outing, Sam had adorably told him that he’d already considered them as dating.  Maybe they had been.  After that, they hadn’t wasted any time on possibilities. 

The first kiss had startled Steve, even though he had been the one to lean in and claim Sam’s mouth for his own.  Sam had been cooking, nothing fancy, just eggs and bacon, yet even so he had looked perfect.  Despite how many times he’d felt them since, Steve could still recall exactly how those full lips had felt against his own the first time.  He could see in his mind the way Sam had calmly set the skillets aside on empty burners, switching the stove off without even looking, allowing his full attention to turn to Steve along with his body.  Breathing had been a secondary concern for the next several minutes.  It had not been the first kiss he had shared with someone he loved, but, as before, it had felt as if he had discovered a piece of himself that had long been missing.

Steve had never truly had a narrative in his life to follow, no kind of time table of life events.  When he realized Sam was the person he wanted to share every aspect of his life with, he already had been.  The only thing left was to make sure it continued, that he spent the _rest_ of his life with him, as well.

Throughout all the planning for that day—he’d asked Natasha and Maria for suggestions on a location, being told swiftly and solidly that no, the living room of their shared apartment just wasn’t romantic enough—it had never occurred to him that Sam’s answer might be anything other than a ‘yes’.  Never, that is, until he was sitting next to his partner, skin simultaneously warmed by dry desert air and chilled by approaching night, the ring he had picked out burning a hole in his pocket that he was one-hundred-percent certain could be seen flaring up from the outside. 

Confidence had filled his playful teasing, and his kiss, faltering only once his question was released into the air between them.  Sam’s answer had come mercifully quickly, and Steve had been unable to feel the ground beneath him for the rest of the night. 

That feeling came back to him, again, a few weeks later, looking into Sam’s eyes, a military chaplain standing beside them. 

Their audience was relatively small, and had been stunned into silence after Steve and Sam had disappeared, only to walk into the room in their dress uniforms.  The invitations had only indicated a gathering, with no hint to the fact they’d be witnessing a wedding ceremony. 

Steve stood to Sam’s left—it was as much a conscious symbol of promises to come as it was his natural place.

When long, graceful fingers slid a matching ring onto his finger, Steve felt as if it might as well have been a beacon tugging his heart toward the sky, lifting him with it, weightless and soaring.  He barely kept his feet on the ground long enough to kiss Sam, to seal the agreement that he now had the privilege of claiming his lover as even more his own for the rest of their days. 

Two days later, friends and loved ones having gone their own ways since, Steve found himself on a plane with Sam, a vacation allotment to allow for their honeymoon.  Their destination, however, wasn’t an island paradise, or a mountain resort, but rather a dot on an ever-present digital map, a map neither of them had set down whether physically or mentally since first taking it up along with a Russian-coded manila folder. 

That very morning after their wedding, Steve had been roused from a resting nap—it wasn’t as if they had slept, after all—by a simple, squeezing, warm hand to the shoulder.  “Steve,” Sam’s voice had sounded from beside him, and Steve had looked up to see his new husband holding a tablet computer, circled GPS readings visible beside a map of Southern Europe.  “We got something.” 

**Author's Note:**

> [Third portion forthcoming]


End file.
